A Good Year for GMO Companies

In the most recent issue of Rachel’s Democracy and Health News, Peter Montague wrote about all of the great things that happened for the biotech industry in 2005, and how those victories have literally planted the seed for further corporate success in years to come. Things “couldn’t have turned out better for the GMO crop companies if they had planned it this way,” he wrote.

Now that everyone acknowledges GMOs are “leaky technology”, spreading into nearby fields and contaminating organic crops, some countries are trying to contain GMO crops and pollen, enforcing strict rules about where the seeds can be planted. In the US, probably the biggest success in enforcing a buffer zone between GMO crops and conventional crops came from Anhueser Busch, which didn’t want its Missouri rice fields contaminated with GMO produce.

Apart from Aneuser Busch, some counties have successfully demanded that GMOs stay out. But Anhheser Busch demanded–and got–a 120-mile buffer zone between any fields that contain GMO seeds and their own fields, which is probably a wider area than any of the counties able to pass a moratorium. Now if only we could pit more corporations against the GM industry, we might get somewhere…